Na zdjęciu: Prezydent Rosji Władimir Putin spotyka się z prezydentem Chin Xi Jinpingiem podczas ceremonii powitalnej w Wielkiej Hali Ludowej, 20 maja 2026 roku w Pekinie w Chinach. (Zdjęcie: Maxim Shemetov/Pool/Getty Images)

Gdy Xi i Putin spierają się o gazociąg, USA nadal trzymają Chiny za energetyczne gardło

Gordon G. Chang
Tłumaczenie: Andrzej Koraszewski

Who will stand with Israel against a new Iran deal?

Jonathan S. Tobin

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to the crowd during his address to a joint session of Congress in Washington, March 3, 2015. Photo by Amos Ben Gershom/GPO.

In the never-ending churning of news cycles, commentators and the public alike are always ready to overreact to each aspect of every story as they roll out. Under these circumstances, historical perspective is rarely part of anyone’s understanding of events. This was amply illustrated by the discussion about the United States signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran.

The deal, whose terms were at first kept secret and have since been revealed, will conclude, at least for the next 60 days, the war America and Israel waged on Tehran starting on Feb. 28.

Hysteria about the implications of the deal for Israel, which was cut out of the negotiations over the agreement, is probably unwise. It’s not clear how much of the Jewish state’s freedom of action to defend itself against Iran, as well as its Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, will be curtailed. Nor can we know for sure what President Donald Trump will do in the immediate future.

Trump’s priorities

His desire to end the fighting and for the renewed flow of oil to lower gas prices at the pump appears to be his main priority. For the moment, that seems to outweigh concerns about his desperation to get a deal that will accomplish these goals, which led him to strike a bargain that bears a troubling resemblance to the one former President Barack Obama concluded with Tehran in 2015.

Trump can always change his mind about that and order strikes once it becomes clear—as anyone who knows anything about the subject understands—that Iran’s leaders have no intention of keeping their word about not acquiring a nuclear weapon. Though his public comments about the agreement make that seem highly unlikely, given the president’s panic about his sinking poll numbers linked to the rise in gas prices. But it’s still theoretically possible. It’s also a dead certainty that it will continue its buildup of missiles and terrorism that threaten its neighbors and the West.

There is one thing, however, that can be said with absolute certainty about the current situation. Now that we know the deal is as bad as many feared, those who speak up against it are not only in no position to stop or even slow the process down. They will also be far more isolated than those who opposed Obama’s deal.

Simply put, unlike the situation 11 years ago—when a broad coalition of Democratic security hawks, Republicans and pro-Israel advocates spoke up against Obama’s disastrous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—critics of Trump’s Iran deal will be limited to the pro-Israel community. And they are likely to stand alone.

Unpersuasive advocates

Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been doing their best to fend off criticism of their decision to end the war with what the former described as a “peace deal” with the Islamist terror regime. That effort was undermined by their initial unwillingness to reveal details of the agreement—something that Vance claimed was due to sensitivities in the Muslim world, an excuse that raised even more concerns about its implications.

Trump’s supporters have been telling everyone who has criticized the deal in the days since it was announced to take a deep breath, and to wait and see what happens. There’s a certain logic to that. The structure of the accord appears to hinge on what will happen during a 60-day period when America lifts its blockade of Iranian ports so Tehran stops menacing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Yet now that the details are known—with unfrozen funds already flowing to Iran, no mention of Iranian missiles and terrorism in it, and no mechanism, other than a resumption of the war, to prevent a regime that can claim it forced Trump to back down from resuming its march to a nuclear weapon—optimism about it seems deeply unpersuasive.

In theory, Trump could reverse his decision, and sensible observers should not abandon all hope that he will. Accepting a terrible deal—and the terms of the agreement make it clear that the United States is doing almost all of the giving and Iran nearly all of the taking—would be out of character for a man who thinks of himself as having mastered “the art of the deal.”

With Trump’s characteristic hyperbole, he has characterized the results of the indirect negotiations conducted by Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff and adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner in flattering terms. He has even declared the Iranian negotiators to be “rational people” who are “nice to deal with,” even though the desperate-for-a-deal-at-any-price duo never actually sat down with them. But the man who spent the last decade rightly mocking Obama and his negotiators for their weakness and gullibility ought to be ashamed of accepting terms that seem to depend on Iran’s goodwill and trustworthiness.

Trump’s critics should acknowledge that not only is the current president far preferable to his Democratic predecessors or to any Democratic Party alternative when it comes to his approach to the Middle East and Israel. They should be equally willing to speak of the damage done to Iran’s military, nuclear and missile programs, and other war-making infrastructure both as part of the 12-day war last June and from the fighting since Feb. 28. The ability of a government that has been at war with the United States, Israel and the West since 1979 to inflict terror on the region and the rest of the world has been set back, perhaps by years.

At the same time, Israel is far stronger vis-à-vis its Islamist foes than it was on Oct. 6, 2023, before the Iranians and their allies launched their cruel war on the Jewish state with the atrocities of Oct. 7.

Still, it appears that Trump has kicked the can down the road with respect to ending the threat from Iran. And it is also almost certainly true that despite raising the hopes of Iran’s tortured people, he has nevertheless ensured the survival of a despotic regime that murdered tens of thousands of them in January. This means that the long war Iran has been waging on America, Israel and the West will continue. It will doom the world to years of more terrorism and the ever-present threat that it will be able to acquire the ability to inflict mass destruction on the Jewish state and moderate Arab countries that oppose it.

As such, this agreement deserves to be vigorously debated. And, to his credit, Trump has offered to submit any deal to Congress for its approval.

If so, that will make it equally clear that the political correlation of forces with respect to Iran is now very different from the situation in 2015 when Obama rammed his catastrophic JCPOA down the throats of an unwilling Congress and American people.

The JCPOA was unpopular

It should be recalled that Obama’s Iran policy was deeply unpopular. A Pew Research Institute poll taken in September 2015 showed that the Iran deal was opposed by a large plurality of Americans, with 49% opposing it and only 21% in favor, with 30% saying they did not know (an unsurprising result given that most Americans pay little attention to most foreign-policy issues). And the more Americans knew about the agreement, the less they liked it, something indicated by the fact that opposition to the deal increased over the course of the year.

Majorities in both Houses of Congress also opposed the JCPOA.

It was only approved by a sleight-of-hand bargain in which Obama and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the feckless Republican who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agreed that it would be put to a vote, which required a two-thirds majority to kill it. This was the opposite of the constitutional requirement for a two-thirds majority to pass a treaty. The House voted 269-162 (with 244 Republicans and 25 Democrats voting no) not to approve the JCPOA, with an equally large majority in the Senate also ready to vote against it. But since that fell short of a super-majority, Obama’s signature foreign-policy “achievement” that guaranteed that Iran would eventually get a nuclear weapon snuck through.

Trump won’t have to resort to those kinds of legislative tricks.

More to the point, the party opposed to the sitting president will play a very different role in 2026 than it did in 2015.

11 years makes a big difference

A decade ago, Congressional Republicans were united against the Iran deal while Democrats were split on it. The GOP even went so far as to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress that year, during which he gave an unprecedented address in which he urged its members to oppose Obama’s effort to enrich and empower an Iranian regime that threatened the United States as much as Israel.

It was only by making support for the measure a litmus test of loyalty to himself that Obama was able to rally most Democrats behind a policy of appeasement that all but the most hard-core left-wingers in the party had opposed only a couple of years earlier. In 2015, there were still pro-Israel Democrats willing to speak up against Obama, even though most of those who had once claimed that title, like Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Corey Booker (D-N.J.), failed to maintain that stance when push came to shove.

If anything, the current Democratic caucuses will be even more eager to terminate the war and appease Iran than they were then. While members of the opposition to the administration would seize on any pretext to thwart Trump, he can rely on them to support an end to the war. They will also be eager to do something that will be perceived as undermining Israel’s security.

By contrast, the House and Senate GOP caucuses today are, as they were in 2015, almost uniformly pro-Israel and hawkish on Iran, with only outliers like lame-duck Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and his fellow libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the rare exceptions to that rule.

What will Republicans do?

That said, how many pro-Israel Republicans will vote against Trump on his Iran deal?

Doing so will not only require the temerity to oppose a president who doesn’t lightly brook opposition and often gets even with those who do so, no matter how long it takes. It will also mean risking being portrayed as warmongers or advocates for a policy that would raise gas prices. It’s far from clear that even the most ardent supporters of a strong Israel and those most interested in stopping Iran would think it wise to try to thwart Trump from ending a deeply unpopular war, even if it is clearly in America’s best interests.

Nor does it require much of an imagination to predict what Trump’s reaction would be to Netanyahu or any other Israeli or pro-Israel organization that advocated for Congress to turn down his version of Iran appeasement, as they did in 2015. It would make Obama’s spiteful attacks on those who opposed him on this issue seem quite tame by comparison.

Thus, while Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East is far stronger than it was in 2015, in the United States, opposition to an appeasement of Iran on Trump’s part would be minimal. Those voices decrying a deal that trusted Iran to keep its word or which would depend on an unlikely decision by this president or one of his successors to resort to the use of force against the Islamist regime would find themselves largely alone, abandoned by Republican friends and mocked by Democratic foes.

Don’t blame Netanyahu

There will be those who will blame this predicament on Netanyahu. His domestic opponents will claim that he depended too heavily on Trump’s friendship for Israel and that of the Republicans. And they will say he alienated Democrats.

This is both untrue and deeply unfair. Whatever one might say about Netanyahu when it comes to navigating the political landscape of his country’s sole superpower ally, the current alignment has little or nothing to do with his unpopularity in the United States or his judgment.

The drift by Democrats away from Israel is the result of the growing influence of toxic left-wing ideologies that falsely label it as a “white” oppressor state. Their willingness to accept and spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza is not the product of Israeli behavior, but of the hijacking of the Democratic Party by antisemitic progressives. The prime minister had no chance of preserving a pro-Israel Democratic Party; the same would have been true of any Israeli leader.

That means that Israel and its friends are in a position where they have no choice but to rely on pro-Israel Republicans to preserve the alliance. That worked wonderfully so long as Trump was behaving—as he has done during the first five-and-a-half years of his two terms—as the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state. But with Trump adopting a more equivocal stand in which he may be waving the white flag on Iran and bristling with resentment at Netanyahu’s refusal to stop defending his citizens, that leaves supporters of Israel isolated in the United States on this issue.

We must hope that it doesn’t come to that—and that Trump isn’t willing to go on deceiving himself and the American people about the dubious prospects for a policy that will preserve the despotic regime in Tehran and ensure that there will be more Middle East wars and bloodshed in the coming years.

But if he is determined to stand by his own Iran deal, it won’t just signal that the aggressive presidency of the past 17 months is about to become a lame-duck administration, even before the outcome of the midterm elections is known. It will also mean that Israel and its friends will largely stand alone when it comes to the debate about this latest appeasement of the Islamist regime of Iran that Trump has given a new lease on life.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.

Iranian Singer Sentenced to 74 Lashes for Not Wearing Hijab During Livestream Concert

Shiryn Ghermezian

Parastoo Ahmadi in a concert live streamed on YouTube in 2024. Photo: Screenshot

Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi and members of her production team have been reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes by the regime in Iran over her performing without a hijab in a concert that was broadcast live on YouTube.

In 2024, the 29-year-old singer and eight members of her production team performed a livestream concert on Ahmadi’s YouTube channel. Ahmadi defied Iran’s mandatory dress code for women and did not wear a hijab while performing the patriotic song “Az Khoon-e Javanan-e Vatan” (“From the Blood of the Youth of the Homeland”). Shortly after she posted the video of the “Caravanserai Concert” online, she and two members of her band were arrested and briefly detained, according to the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Odpowiedź Izraela na porozumienie z Iranem

Vanessa Berg

Rozczarowujące porozumienie z Iranem raczej nie zmieni sposobu, w jaki Izraelczycy myślą, walczą i przygotowują się na to, co nadejdzie.

Dla Izraelczyków najbardziej niepokojącym elementem międzynarodowej dyplomacji często nie jest to, co wiadomo, lecz to, czego nie wiadomo.

Jeżeli Stany Zjednoczone i Iran rzeczywiście osiągnęły Memorandum Porozumienia mające zakończyć ostatni konflikt, wielu Izraelczyków natychmiast zada to samo pytanie: co dokładnie zostało oddane w zamian?

Na początku wojny cele Izraela były ambitne. Publiczna debata koncentrowała się nie tylko na powstrzymaniu bezpośredniego zagrożenia, ale na zasadniczej zmianie strategicznego układu sił, który od dziesięcioleci definiuje Bliski Wschód: ambicji nuklearnych Iranu, jego programu rakiet balistycznych, wspierania terrorystycznych organizacji zastępczych, a nawet przetrwania samego reżimu.

Jeżeli wynegocjowane porozumienie pozostawi znaczną część tej architektury nienaruszoną, rozczarowanie w Izraelu będzie nieuniknione – ale rozczarowania nie należy mylić z porażką.

Historia sugeruje, że Izraelczycy reagują na strategiczne niepowodzenia inaczej niż większość narodów. Rzadko postrzegają niekorzystne okoliczności jako trwały stan rzeczy. Zamiast tego traktują je jako problemy do rozwiązania.

Ta tendencja wynika z trzech głęboko zakorzenionych cech izraelskiego społeczeństwa.

1. Odmowa bycia „frajerem”

Niewiele pojęć jest bardziej centralnych dla izraelskiej kultury niż idea niebycia „frajerem” (frier, פראייר), której korzenie sięgają jidysz, gdzie określano tak osobę łatwowierną lub łatwą do oszukania.

Frajer to ktoś, kogo można wykorzystać – ktoś, kto ufa zbyt mocno, czeka zbyt długo albo pozwala innym decydować o swoim losie. Izraelczycy nie znoszą bycia frajerami.

Ten kulturowy instynkt został ukształtowany przez pokolenia doświadczeń. Raz za razem Izraelczycy przekonywali się, że obietnice składane na międzynarodowych forach często rozpływają się w zderzeniu z geopolityczną rzeczywistością. Gwarancje bezpieczeństwa mogą się zmieniać. Administracje przychodzą i odchodzą. Sojusze się przesuwają.

W rezultacie Izraelczycy mają tendencję do postrzegania międzynarodowych porozumień jako użytecznych, lecz niewystarczających. Nawet jeśli porozumienie amerykańsko-irańskie tymczasowo zmniejszy napięcia, niewielu Izraelczyków uzna, że problem zniknął. Zamiast tego będą pytać: co dalej?

Najbardziej prawdopodobną reakcją nie będzie rezygnacja, lecz adaptacja. Izrael niemal na pewno pogłębi działania wywiadowcze, rozbuduje zdolności cybernetyczne, przyspieszy innowacje technologiczne, wzmocni partnerstwa regionalne i dopracuje opcje militarne. Każda luka pozostawiona przez dyplomację stanie się wyzwaniem do pokonania dzięki pomysłowości i przygotowaniu.

Pytanie, które zada sobie wielu Izraelczyków, nie będzie brzmiało, czy porozumienie rozwiązuje problem, lecz czy nie byliby głupcami, zakładając, że tak właśnie jest. A Izraelczycy od dziesięcioleci udowadniają, że nie mają najmniejszej ochoty odgrywać takiej roli.

Przypomina mi się historia początków Żelaznej Kopuły, niegdyś uznawanej za cud światowej klasy, a dziś będącej czymś niemal oczywistym w izraelskich realiach. Na początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych Mordechaj Josipow wyemigrował do Izraela z Uzbekistanu. Pewnego letniego poranka w 2004 roku czekał na kuzyna, który odwoził swojego wnuka do przedszkola w Sderot (kilometr od granicy ze Strefą Gazy), gdy nagle doszło do eksplozji.

Uderzenie rakiety Hamasu pozostawiło pośrodku asfaltowej ulicy, przed przedszkolem Lilach, w dzielnicy niskiej zabudowy mieszkaniowej, lej wielkości dużej patelni. Odłamki metalu przeszyły ciała trzyletniego Afika Zahaviego i jego matki Ruthie, gdy około ósmej rano szli w kierunku szkoły. Afik zmarł w drodze do szpitala, natomiast Ruthie przeżyła i mogła opowiedzieć swoją historię.

Czterdziestodziewięcioletni dziadek Ilanit oraz trzyletni Afik byli pierwszymi ofiarami rakiet wystrzelonych w stronę Izraela przez palestyńskich bojowników ze Strefy Gazy. Ich śmierć skłoniła izraelski rząd do rozpoczęcia projektu, który doprowadził do powstania innowacyjnego systemu obrony przeciwrakietowej znanego dziś jako Żelazna Kopuła.

Izraelczycy odmówili bycia frajerami wobec działań Hamasu. Podjęli działania, by zmienić rzeczywistość, i z takim samym zdecydowaniem będą podchodzić do zagrożenia ze strony Iranu.

2. Izraelski optymizm

Dla osób z zewnątrz Izraelczycy często wydają się zaskakująco optymistyczni jak na ludzi żyjących w jednym z najbardziej niestabilnych regionów świata. Ich optymizm nie jest naiwny. Jest wypracowany.

Od 1948 roku Izrael stoczył wiele wojen, przyjął fale terroryzmu, przetrwał kryzysy gospodarcze, doświadczył dyplomatycznej izolacji i wielokrotnie mierzył się z zagrożeniami, które zdaniem wielu obserwatorów mogły przytłoczyć państwo. A jednak Izrael trwa. Każde pokolenie Izraelczyków dorasta w otoczeniu przykładów pozornie niemożliwych przeszkód, które ostatecznie zostały pokonane.

Nikt nie uosabiał tego sposobu myślenia bardziej niż nieżyjący już wybitny izraelski mąż stanu Szimon Peres. W swojej książce No Room for Small Dreams („Nie ma miejsca na małe marzenia”) opisywał izraelski optymizm nie jako myślenie życzeniowe, lecz jako praktyczny sposób mierzenia się z rzeczywistością. Wskazywał trzy kluczowe składniki: kreatywne myślenie, odwagę brania odpowiedzialności i determinację.

Izrael narodził się dzięki niekonwencjonalnym rozwiązaniom niekonwencjonalnych problemów. Założyciele państwa odziedziczyli bagna, pustynie, skromne zasoby, wrogich sąsiadów i niemal zerowy margines błędu. Konwencjonalne myślenie było luksusem, na który nie mogli sobie pozwolić. Gdy bagna pełne malarii zagrażały pierwszym osiedlom, pionierzy sprowadzili z Australii eukaliptusy, aby pochłaniały nadmiar wody.

Nawet słynne izraelskie pojęcie balagan (trwały stan nieporządku) często służy jako inkubator kreatywności. W społeczeństwie, gdzie struktury bywają niedoskonałe, ludzie uczą się improwizować, dostosowywać i wynajdywać nowe rozwiązania. Jeśli porozumienie dyplomatyczne stworzy nowe ograniczenia, Izraelczycy nie zaakceptują ich biernie. Zaczną szukać niekonwencjonalnych sposobów ich obejścia. Tak było zawsze.

Izraelska kultura często zakłada, że jeśli coś trzeba zrobić, ktoś musi wystąpić naprzód i to zrobić. Tendencję tę można dostrzec w całym społeczeństwie. Widać ją w ekosystemie startupów, który niezmiennie należy do najbardziej innowacyjnych na świecie. Widać ją w wojsku, gdzie od młodszych rangą oczekuje się inicjatywy, a nie ślepego przestrzegania procedur. Widać ją również w ruchach młodzieżowych, takich jak izraelscy skauci, gdzie młodzi ludzie otrzymują wyjątkowo wysoki poziom odpowiedzialności już od najmłodszych lat.

Efektem jest kultura, która rzadko czeka na idealne warunki. Izraelczycy mogą narzekać. Mogą bez końca się spierać. Mogą nie zgadzać się co do strategii. Jednak w obliczu wyzwania zazwyczaj zakładają, że ostateczna odpowiedzialność spoczywa na nich samych.

Niewiele historii lepiej oddaje izraelską wytrwałość niż wysiłki Peresa zmierzające do stworzenia fundamentów izraelskiego programu nuklearnego.

W 1956 roku, jako dyrektor generalny izraelskiego Ministerstwa Obrony, Peres pomagał koordynować kampanię synajską. Podczas spotkań z francuskimi urzędnikami dostrzegł okazję, którą większość uznałaby za nierealną: przekonać Francję do pomocy Izraelowi w stworzeniu programu energetyki jądrowej. Ku jego zaskoczeniu Francuzi się zgodzili.

Jednak przekształcenie tej zgody w rzeczywistość okazało się znacznie trudniejsze. Projekt spotkał się ze sprzeciwem izraelskich przywódców, obawami Stanów Zjednoczonych oraz intensywną kontrolą ze strony Związku Radzieckiego. Następnie, gdy we wrześniu 1957 roku ostateczne porozumienie było już na wyciągnięcie ręki, francuski rząd zaczął się rozpadać.

Po latach negocjacji brakowało już tylko zgody politycznego kierownictwa Francji. Peres biegał od gabinetu do gabinetu, przekonując sceptycznych urzędników i gorączkowo zbierając niezbędne podpisy, zanim rząd upadnie. Gdy kryzys się pogłębiał, nawet Dawid Ben Gurion uznał, że misja Peresa najprawdopodobniej zakończy się „na niczym”. Mylił się.

Peresowi udało się zdobyć zgodę ustępującego premiera dosłownie w ostatniej chwili. Chociaż rząd faktycznie już się rozpadał, porozumienie celowo podpisano i opatrzono datą z dnia poprzedzającego jego upadek, torując drogę francuskiej pomocy. Tym podpisem zasiano ziarno izraelskiego programu nuklearnego.

Po latach Peres wspominał ten epizod z charakterystycznym pragmatyzmem:

„Ta data czy tamta – jakie to ma znaczenie?” – mówił. „Jakie ma to znaczenie między przyjaciółmi?”

3. Błogosławieństwo w przebraniu

Istnieje jeszcze jedna możliwość, którą wielu Izraelczyków po cichu dostrzeże: jeśli porozumienie okaże się rozczarowujące, może ono ostatecznie wzmocnić strategiczną niezależność Izraela.

Przez dziesięciolecia Izrael cieszył się wyjątkowym wsparciem Stanów Zjednoczonych. To partnerstwo pozostaje bezcenne. Jednak ostatnie wydarzenia przypomniały lekcję, którą wielu Izraelczyków już znało: sojusznicy mają interesy, a nie obowiązki.

Amerykańskie administracje się zmieniają. Amerykańskie priorytety się zmieniają. Amerykańscy wyborcy się zmieniają. A wraz z nimi zmienia się amerykańska polityka zagraniczna. Długoterminowe bezpieczeństwo Izraela nie może więc opierać się wyłącznie na założeniu, że Waszyngton zawsze będzie podzielał postrzeganie zagrożeń przez Jerozolimę lub jej harmonogram strategiczny.

Rozczarowujące porozumienie może przyspieszyć wysiłki na rzecz dywersyfikacji relacji Izraela na świecie, pogłębiania partnerstw regionalnych, rozwijania niezależnych zdolności oraz ograniczania zależności od pojedynczego zagranicznego partnera.

Historia sugeruje, że okresy strategicznego dyskomfortu często zmuszają państwa do stawania się silniejszymi. Historia Izraela, być może bardziej niż historia jakiegokolwiek innego kraju, pełna jest przykładów, gdy przeciwności losu stawały się nieoczekiwanym źródłem odporności. Paradoks może polegać na tym, że porozumienie mające ograniczyć Izrael ostatecznie popchnie go ku większej samodzielności.

Wielu obserwatorów będzie interpretować porozumienie amerykańsko-irańskie przez pryzmat dyplomacji. Izraelczycy spojrzą na nie raczej przez pryzmat adaptacji. Od pokoleń funkcjonują w rzeczywistościach, których sami nie wybrali.

Nie oznacza to, że z zadowoleniem przyjmują niekorzystne rezultaty. Oznacza to, że nie pozwalają, by niekorzystne rezultaty ich definiowały.

Porozumienie może zmienić strategiczny krajobraz. Może opóźnić realizację pewnych celów. Może stworzyć nowe wyzwania. Jest jednak mało prawdopodobne, by zmieniło fundamentalny charakter społeczeństwa, które wielokrotnie przekształcało niepowodzenia w szanse.

Izraelczycy nie należą do ludzi, którzy użalają się nad sobą – najprawdopodobniej już zastanawiają się, jak zdobyć irański uran, a przynajmniej od tego zacząć.

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Future of Jewish

Israel’s Answer to the Iran Deal

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What’s behind the campaign to demonize Israel inside Trumpworld?

What’s behind the campaign to demonize Israel inside Trumpworld?

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, May 27, 2026. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House.

In recent months, the world has witnessed some of the closest cooperation between the governments and armed forces of the United States and one of its allies. The war launched on Feb. 28 by the United States and Israel against Iran required intense coordination in the areas of intelligence and precision attacks. What followed was an exhibition of high-tech warfare that bespoke both the common purpose of the two nations and the trust that has been built over the years between their militaries. And it resulted in the destruction of much of the Islamist regime’s military forces, the decimation of its nuclear and missile programs, and the targeting of Tehran’s leadership.

It was made possible by the willingness of the two governments to act, at least for a time, in unison strategically, but also for their forces to be engaged tactically on a level that rivals the great alliances of military history, such as the one between the United States and Britain during the Second World War.

That collaboration upsets the political foes of the Trump administration and Israel within the Democratic Party, as well as the broader red-green global alliance of Marxists and Islamists that essentially despise both nations. It’s also galling to the small but vocal faction on the American right that is isolationist in its sensibilities and virulently anti-Israel in a way that often betrays the antisemitic attitudes of its advocates.

Unsubstantiated claims of spying

And that is the context for understanding the story that made headlines at NBC News and The New York Times over the weekend about alleged Israeli spying on the United States.

A deep dive into the details of the story reveals that the hyperbolic headlines that stated that the “Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say,” and “Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel” were not based on any actual revelations about Israeli espionage that had been uncovered. Instead, the articles merely floated suspicions. The leaked reports claimed that “Israel’s ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a ‘critical level” and that Jerusalem was trying to “eavesdrop on senior American officials, including Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s top negotiator, Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, and one of his main deputies, Michael P. DiMino IV.”

That sounds alarming. But it also falls far short of any actual evidence that such activity had taken place or that it means that a crisis of confidence exists between the two allies.

Moreover, it flies in the face of what credible sources about Israeli intelligence say, like left-wing journalist Yossi Melman, who currently writes for Haaretz. No fan of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has been covering this subject for decades. He confirms what most of those in the know say about the topic when he wrote that “Israel’s intelligence community stopped spying on U.S. soil and against American targets or individuals around the world following the Pollard affair in 1985. Period. Not Unit 8200. Not the Mossad and not the Shin Bet.”

Melman agrees with others who have noted that the real story here isn’t the unsubstantiated allegations about Israeli behavior, but rather why some figures in the Pentagon leaked these claims to liberal media outlets that remain notoriously hostile to the administration they serve.

They are clearly aiming at not only creating a wedge between the two countries but also to score points inside Trumpworld against the far larger faction of officials who are supportive of the alliance with Israel. More than that, they aim to blow it up by blaming Israel for a war that the isolationists didn’t support in the first place. In doing so, they hope to persuade the president to distance himself from a conflict that—like the left-wing publications to which they have fed these claims—they believe is a failure.

Obsessed with Israel

For those on the far right, it isn’t just that they lack enthusiasm about the alliance. They view Israel, and both its Jewish and non-Jewish supporters, as the source of all evil in the world and the root of America’s problems.

Their obsessive hatred for the Jewish state extends to believing without a shred of proof that Jerusalem was behind the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Like the myths about “The Israel Lobby” that fuel resentments about AIPAC, the Jews and their state are not merely the scapegoats for scandals, but are believed to be manipulating Trump and the United States to work against American interests. In this way, antisemitic shorthand about “Zio-pedos” has become the way the far-right mimics the Marxist formulations about a “white oppressor” state in which Israel and Zionists are demonized as not just wrongheaded, but perverted criminals.

Unsupported allegations about Israeli spying are thus not merely overhyped concerns about security, but simply another layer of the same antisemitic paranoia that fuels some of the discourse about Epstein as well as the war on Iran.

The timing of the leaks is crucial because they came at a moment when the ultimate direction of U.S. policy toward Iran seems to be up in the air.

The president is under enormous political pressure to end the war due to the resulting hike in fuel prices and the way that seems to be impacting the chances of his party holding onto control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Witkoff and Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who have been pursuing some sort of agreement to end the war, seem, like their Democratic predecessors who sought appeasement of Iran in the Obama and Biden administrations, to believe in diplomacy for its own sake.

While Washington and Jerusalem have much in common with respect to Tehran, their positions are not identical. And if Trump is truly committed to getting a deal with Iran that would be on terms that resemble those of Obama’s disastrously weak 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran, it will turn those differences into a major problem. The Iranian regime’s purpose is Israel’s destruction and an endless generational war on the West. Diplomacy that is based on tolerating it or trusting its leaders to keep their word on nuclear or other issues is a trap that sensible policymakers should avoid.

Reversal of fortune

As far as those on the far right whose positions on Israel are little different from those on the far left, the notion that the Iran war is a failure, despite the enormous military success already achieved, is their chance for a reversal of fortune.

Trump agreed with some in the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP about the need to make Europe pay for its own defense and to focus on the threat from China. But they failed to reckon with the fact that, for all of his criticisms of the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump has always been a hawk about the Islamist regime in Iran, its role in international terrorism and the mortal threat its nuclear ambitions posed to the West.

As Eli Lake wrote in an insightful article published in March in The Free Press, this juxtaposition has led to someone like Colby, who is thought of as the leading “war skeptic” inside the administration, becoming a defender of the fight against Iran. Supporters of Israel viewed his appointment with trepidation because he had said that the United States could “live” with a nuclear Iran and appeared on political commentator Tucker Carlson’s podcast in 2024.

Colby’s willingness to go along with the war may well be due, as he said during his confirmation hearings, to Iran’s ballistic-missile program, which made it a threat to the United States. But it seems to indicate that the anti-war faction in the administration was not only powerless but, like its leading figure, Vice President JD Vance, had been forced by Trump to agree with him on the subject, or face isolation and potential eviction from their offices.

If Trump can be convinced to abandon his hopes of defeating Tehran, either by military strikes or a sensible strategy of strangling its economy, then the hopes of the isolationist Israel-haters can be revived.

Pollard’s tragic legacy

It is highly unlikely that Israel is conducting operations that could be characterized as a “critical threat” to American secrecy.

The disastrous Jonathan Pollard affair complicated U.S.-Israel relations for a generation. It also fostered unfair suspicions about the loyalty of American Jews that fueled several ensuing spy scares that proved to be more about the hatred for the Jewish state among some U.S. officials than anything else. Pollard was punished more harshly than he deserved and far more than anyone who had spied for a U.S. ally. But his betrayal, as well as that of his Israeli handlers and their high-ranking political masters (a list that included Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin), stands as a cautionary tale for the Jewish state’s current policymakers and intelligence officers that can’t be ignored.

Those who consider Pollard, who was released from prison after 30 years in jail in 2015 and then allowed to immigrate to Israel in 2020, to be a hero are deeply misguided. The convicted spy’s delusions of grandeur about his misdeeds and terrible advice to American Jews to commit similar crimes should warrant treatment of him as a pariah rather than a role model.

That said, the motives of those who obsess about Israeli spying, whether by exploiting the legacy of the Pollard affair—much as they do about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli forces during the confusion of the 1967 Six-Day War—as a reason to distrust or hate the Jewish state, deserve to be questioned.

A mutually beneficial alliance

The feigned righteous indignation about Israeli espionage ignores the fact that all nations, including the closest of allies, constantly seek to find out all they can about each other, and their intentions and policies. Indeed, it is highly likely, if not almost certainly true, that the United States is currently engaged in spying on Israel. Still, as the junior partner in the alliance, Israel should be far more circumspect about its efforts to find out what the Americans intend to do than its partners.

Yet it is equally important to remember that among the main advantages of the alliance for the United States is that Jerusalem shares with Washington vast stores of information about the Middle East and the Islamic world that American agencies have proven unable to provide for themselves. The United States derives enormous benefits from this, coupled with Israeli contributions to joint projects to invent and improve various aspects of defense technology. And the billions in military aid that Israel gets—that its critics never stop complaining about—are almost all spent in the United States and are critical to bolstering American defense manufacturing.

Why then, attempt to blow up the relationship with a country that is not only Washington’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East, but one that has the capability and willingness to fight side by side with its American partners?

Far-right elements within the administration, likely behind the leaks about an Israeli spy scare, share the paranoid hatred of Jews regularly aired on the podcasts of antisemites like Carlson, the even crazier Candace Owens, neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes, and even the supposedly more mainstream Megyn Kelly. They aren’t interested in promoting American interests so much as they are sowing distrust of Israel and its supporters simply to bolster their conspiratorial worldview.

Most of all, they are hoping to seize on what ought to be characterized as fear-mongering about Israel, rather than an actual threat to American security, to undermine the defense of the West against Iran’s Islamist terrorists.

Doubtless, they are encouraged by Trump’s erratic policy statements about Iran. The president’s efforts to restrain Jerusalem’s attacks on Iran and its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries in Lebanon have bolstered the belief that the two allies aren’t just having tactical disagreements about the next step in the conflict, but are pursuing mutually exclusive goals. Should Trump embrace an Obama-style deal with Iran, then those who are seeking to crack up the alliance will think they have gained the upper hand.

But what shouldn’t be forgotten is that the past few months of shared combat against Iran have proven that the U.S.-Israel relationship is not a plot imposed on Washington by a lobby. Those who strive to undermine it are making America weaker, not stronger. And their reasons for doing so are rooted in antisemitic conspiracy theories as opposed to rational strategic thought. The alliance is not a matter of American charity or mythical Israeli manipulation. It is a foundational element of U.S. national security against the ongoing threat of Islamist terror that deserves the support of all American patriots.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.